Last night I went to an event in Borough that was conceptually brilliant, fascinating in reality, but still deep down a bit annoying. Based on an inspired Japanese concept called a Pecha Kucha, there were fifteen speakers, each of whom were allowed to present twenty Powerpoint slides which scrolled automatically after twenty seconds. So, fifteen talks, each lasting six minutes and twenty seconds. What could be better for the MTV/ADD generation? Our fifteen speakers were all adventurers, and the night was in aid of a charity called Hope & Homes for Children. We heard some incredible stories: a male/female team who narrowly survived icy conditions in Patagonia; a man who was paralysed while climbing in Wales and went on to ascend Kilimanjaro in a specially designed wheelchair; a man who lived in a tree-house for a year to experiment with sustainability; a girl who rowed single handedly across the Indian Ocean. At one point, one of the speakers asked how many people in the room had climbed Everest, and several people put up their hands. It was quite a unique gathering.
And yet, and yet... I'm afraid my Guardian-reading side found it difficult to feel genuinely elated by these people's achievements. Sure, they are fantastic, and some of them have raised tens of thousands for charity. But some... haven't. And out of fifteen speakers, I'd estimate that at least twelve of them spoke with the plummy tones of someone who'd inherited more than just a few scratched CDs and a dirty Breville. I'm not saying their adventures weren't awesome and impressive. These people unquestionably pushed themselves to the limits of their ability and it was very interesting to hear what they'd seen. But who's to say what I would do if I'd grown up with enough money in the bank that meant getting a steady job wasn't a concern? If I'd had millions, maybe I would be cycling the globe or taking photographs while following Shackleton's route to the South Pole. OK, it's massively unlikely given that I'm fundamentally quite panicked if I know I'll be away from my sofa for more than 24 hours. But there was something that made me bristle about the guy who'd lived in a tree house telling us it had only cost £300 and that we can all have a life-changing adventure if we put our minds to it. Where did he build the tree house? Where did he get the land? Was it free? I doubt it. Another of the speakers decided to walk from London to Istanbul and set off three days later. Not the kind of option you can take if you've got a mortgage to pay or any other of the myriad commitments or responsibilities that come with normal existence. Adventures are one thing - the practicalities are another, and I'd have liked to have heard about them. There was a slightly patronising sense that a normal life was an inadequate life, and that put me on the defensive.
I was sitting next to a guy who laughingly understood my gripe, and told me about a bicycle courier who'd decided to stick two fingers up at the 'adventure capitalists'. The final post of his blog, following his cycle round the world, is here in all its vitriolic glory. I think he could have made his point just as effectively without villifying one individual in the way he does - but it (and the comments underneath) still make interesting reading, IMHO.
What was unequivocally good was the evening's main charity, Hopes and Homes. The main man explained the work they do in Central & Eastern Europe, and in Africa. One of the examples he gave was of two young brothers whose dad had died of AIDS when they were babies. When their mother also died of AIDS, the neighbours were too scared of the disease in her body and wouldn't remove the corpse. These two tiny boys had to live, alone, in a crappy house, with the corpse of their mother, for five weeks. I had had two glasses of wine by this point and the tears were streaming down my face. I don't know what's going on with my hormones at the moment but I'm very emotional. Anyway - it seems like an absolutely incredible charity, and if anyone can spare anything after Haiti, please click here.
In other news, my friend met a guy on Saturday night who took a fancy to her. Sadly the feeling wasn't mutual. Yesterday she received an email that included the following: "Since you haven't become my friend on Facebook, I am now emailing you. (I'm impatient)." No shit. And he ended by giving her his mobile number, "in case you are impatient like me and you want to text or call. If you're not, I'll be fine. After a couple of months in therapy." Goodness. No pressure.
Showing posts with label Charity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charity. Show all posts
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Haiti, Leona and self-absorption. Just another day on LLFF.
A couple of weeks ago, when Islamists were protesting in the town of Wootton Bassett, Newsarse, the brilliant satirical UK news website, posted a headline saying that all over the country, left-wing Guardian readers' heads were exploding because they couldn't find the correct stance on the matter - the conflict between a true commitment to freedom of speech, a desire not to write off all Muslims as violent wannabe bombers and a simultaneous and firm dislike of terrorism put us into a state of mental overdrive, whereupon we blew up. I'm going through a similar situation with cruise liners in Haiti. What's happened over there is utterly devastating, the piles of corpses stacking up outside the morgues is heartbreaking and the thought of such a turbulent country being kicked so conclusively in the nuts when it's already so weak is just mind-shattering. And now we read that hundreds of tourists are being shipped in to a port sixty miles away, where they are free to sunbathe, jetski and relax. The Guardian article points out that the boats and their passengers bring valuable money to the port in this time of urgent need, and one of the commentators rightly says that if there was a huge disaster in London, we wouldn't want tourists to stop going to Brighton. But there is something undeniably gross about holidaying so close to human agony. I know, I know, it's a pointless question of geography - would we give someone a hard time about going ahead with a planned holiday in Marbella while the earthquake is being cleaned up in Haiti? Probably not. So what does it matter if they happen to have booked near the site of a recent natural disaster? But, like sitting down next to a homeless person and tucking in to a Big Mac, it seems more than a little insensitive. The cruise ships justify it by giving 100% of their profits to the rescue efforts. How about giving the profits anyway but diverting the cruise somewhere else? I dunno. I'm only a born again liberal. I don't have the answers. I just feel a bit sick. I gave £100 to the relief effort this morning and my company, in a rare it's-good-to-work-for-a-City-bank moment, will double all its employees' donations. I'm not sure if any of it will get to where it's needed, but I can do nothing else. Please visit Unicef and donate, if you haven't already. I wouldn't normally mention the amount but I thought it might add gravitas. Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck we're so lucky.
In other news, it appears that Leona Lewis forgot to remind her skivvies to iron her dress before the Golden Globes. Oops. Sure, there's the crushed silk look, I know about that, but what she's wearing isn't it. She looks like she did my usual trick of pulling the garment out of the washing machine, brushing it down firmly while it was still damp and hoping for the best. Instead, the thigh-height creases just draw attention to... the wrong places. Obviously if the girl had even a spectre of a personality I might be more forgiving, but as it is, I feel like I'm poking fun at a waxwork, which is not only fine but to be encouraged.
And finally, I am thrilled to confirm that the anti-biotic stint is working its way to a close. I'm off out tonight with Simon and I'm so excited about my first glass of cold white wine that I could weep. Given that we're seeing The Road first, I'll probably already be inconsolable, either with disappointment that it's not a patch on the book, or with genuine grief, the tears might be less hilarious hyperbole and more actually embarrassing. You'll read it here first.
In other news, it appears that Leona Lewis forgot to remind her skivvies to iron her dress before the Golden Globes. Oops. Sure, there's the crushed silk look, I know about that, but what she's wearing isn't it. She looks like she did my usual trick of pulling the garment out of the washing machine, brushing it down firmly while it was still damp and hoping for the best. Instead, the thigh-height creases just draw attention to... the wrong places. Obviously if the girl had even a spectre of a personality I might be more forgiving, but as it is, I feel like I'm poking fun at a waxwork, which is not only fine but to be encouraged.And finally, I am thrilled to confirm that the anti-biotic stint is working its way to a close. I'm off out tonight with Simon and I'm so excited about my first glass of cold white wine that I could weep. Given that we're seeing The Road first, I'll probably already be inconsolable, either with disappointment that it's not a patch on the book, or with genuine grief, the tears might be less hilarious hyperbole and more actually embarrassing. You'll read it here first.
Monday, 21 September 2009
But I have promises to keep...
On Friday night and Saturday morning, I walked twenty miles around this great city. And it was hard. Grania had decided to join me a couple of weeks ago, squeezing the charity walk in between the end of the working day and a 6am train to Gatwick on Saturday morning, which was insania but I was glad of the company. At about 7.15pm we left my flat, took the tube to London Bridge and walked over to City Hall, where there was a band playing inspiring tunes to get us in the mood, and we were given our route maps and a free bottle of water and our commemorative T-shirts and our bowler hats. Yes. Our bowler hats.
So. Then we dashed up inside the spiral of City Hall to see the big press room which was fun, and then back down to the starting line for about 20:45. West along the river from Tower Bridge to the Wheel. On the Wheel for an 'exclusive' nightride which was great, could see for miles, tried and failed to ditch our bowlers by swapping them with passers' by, then over Waterloo Bridge, up Victoria Street, left halfway along, across to Channel 4, where we had a tour and learned that Richard Rogers always likes to put phallic symbols in his buildings, and Grania ate a flapjack (later regretted), and then we set off again, wiggling through south Victoria, across Vauxhall Bridge Road, over Ebury Bridge, near Google, waved at Simon, correctly following the yellow arrows when the pack ahead of us had turned left, up into Belgravia, south of Harrods, up Beauchamp Place, past lots of drunk people, left onto Brompton Road, past the V&A, right at the Natural History Museum, past the Science Museum, up to the next stop, the Royal Geographical Society, where there was a string quartet playing and we ate biscuits and photographed ourselves standing behind the lectern, and then we went on, along Kensington Gore and then Ken High Street, past many more drunk people, past a queue of Eurotrash waiting to get into a club in the building where Barkers used to be (poss a new entrance to the Roof Gardens?), and we agreed that we'd genuinely rather be spending our Friday night walking twenty miles than queuing to get into that club, and then left opposite Olympia, down past Barons Court, noticing that one of the flats with the huge windows on the Talgarth Road is for sale, and then past where I once weed in the street following massive night out at Lucy and Tina's when I fell off a bed into a wooden clothes drying rack and got a black eye, and then Grania told me about when she once got home to her mum's house after a big party and was sick in the dog bed while the dog was still in it, and then we arrived at the Fulham Palace Road and turned left into Charing Cross Hospital to visit the amazing Maggie's Centre, which is beautiful and so worthwhile and made it all so much more powerful but we couldn't sit down in case we never got up again, so we carried on down Fulham Palace Road, went to Fulham Palace at the south end but turned around and came straight back after posing by a fountain in the courtyard, and then went up the New King's Road, over the hump, past Crazy Larry's and Embargo, and then right near the Chelsea Bun, onto Edith Grove, past where the Stones used to live, left onto the Embankment, along along along, and then right over Battersea Bridge, down past the QVC building to the roundabout with the Shell garage, where Grania bought a toothbrush, and then left onto York Way or whatever it is, past Battersea Dogs' Home, where I was photographed stroking the photograph of a kitten, and then on into Battersea Power Station, the architectural highlight for me, which was moving and incredible and I loved it, and we ate egg mayonnaise sandwiches and drank squash and stretched a bit, and then on to Vauxhall, so close to home, but no, left over Vauxhall Bridge, right onto Millbank, past Labour HQ, past the Commons, over Parliament Square, round the back towards the park, but then onto Horse Guards, and then actually across Horseguards, where they do the Trooping of the Colour (I think, having never been as a grown-up) and the moon was bright, and Grania and I had our photos taken with handsome (it was dark, let us live our dreams) guards wearing full pointy-silver-hat-with-long-white-horsehair-tassel-thing and they squeezed us very tight and we giggled like forty year olds at a Chippendale shows, and then went through the building out onto Whitehall, and then (hilariously) down the exact road where the woman's wee went on my foot, and some other woman tried to talk to us at that point, wanting to bond about the handsome guards, and Grania and I both wanted to bond and be nice, but also it was about 4 in the morning and we had a little further to go and we were tired and smalltalk proved beyond us, and we ploughed on, under Hungerford Bridge, along the Embankment again to the final stop, the Savoy Hotel, where we went up to the third floor in a lift and drank cheap Champagne out of plastic flutes on the balcony and then I sat on my own in the big, loudly-carpeted room while Grania went to the loo, and I listened to the band, and when she came back she said I looked like the loser guest at a bad wedding, sitting there in my walking boots, and then we went down the stairs and briefly got embroiled in another conversation with the same woman, but then she overtook us when she became confident of the route, and we carried on east along the river, past Somerset House and Blackfriars, up to the Millennium Bridge and then left up the stairs towards St. Paul's, and then right and right again, back onto the river, and we could see Tower Bridge, our goal, but it wasn't getting any closer, and then the route took us north of the river about a block, along Upper Thames Street and then Lower Thames Street, and then to the Tower, round it and right, over Tower Bridge and finally down the stairs to the finish line, where we were given medals and free muesli and then we had to race to find a cab so that Grania could get back to my flat, pick up her luggage and head back to Victoria for the Gatwick Express. I had a bath and went to bed, and then woke up three hours later because my legs were aching so much. I took two Nurofen and went back to sleep. Then at 11am my downstairs neighbours started playing loud, bad R'n'B. I lay on my sofa, then went to my parents', fell asleep after a delicious dinner at about 9pm and went to bed. Maggie's Centres are £550 richer as a result. Excellent.
So. Then we dashed up inside the spiral of City Hall to see the big press room which was fun, and then back down to the starting line for about 20:45. West along the river from Tower Bridge to the Wheel. On the Wheel for an 'exclusive' nightride which was great, could see for miles, tried and failed to ditch our bowlers by swapping them with passers' by, then over Waterloo Bridge, up Victoria Street, left halfway along, across to Channel 4, where we had a tour and learned that Richard Rogers always likes to put phallic symbols in his buildings, and Grania ate a flapjack (later regretted), and then we set off again, wiggling through south Victoria, across Vauxhall Bridge Road, over Ebury Bridge, near Google, waved at Simon, correctly following the yellow arrows when the pack ahead of us had turned left, up into Belgravia, south of Harrods, up Beauchamp Place, past lots of drunk people, left onto Brompton Road, past the V&A, right at the Natural History Museum, past the Science Museum, up to the next stop, the Royal Geographical Society, where there was a string quartet playing and we ate biscuits and photographed ourselves standing behind the lectern, and then we went on, along Kensington Gore and then Ken High Street, past many more drunk people, past a queue of Eurotrash waiting to get into a club in the building where Barkers used to be (poss a new entrance to the Roof Gardens?), and we agreed that we'd genuinely rather be spending our Friday night walking twenty miles than queuing to get into that club, and then left opposite Olympia, down past Barons Court, noticing that one of the flats with the huge windows on the Talgarth Road is for sale, and then past where I once weed in the street following massive night out at Lucy and Tina's when I fell off a bed into a wooden clothes drying rack and got a black eye, and then Grania told me about when she once got home to her mum's house after a big party and was sick in the dog bed while the dog was still in it, and then we arrived at the Fulham Palace Road and turned left into Charing Cross Hospital to visit the amazing Maggie's Centre, which is beautiful and so worthwhile and made it all so much more powerful but we couldn't sit down in case we never got up again, so we carried on down Fulham Palace Road, went to Fulham Palace at the south end but turned around and came straight back after posing by a fountain in the courtyard, and then went up the New King's Road, over the hump, past Crazy Larry's and Embargo, and then right near the Chelsea Bun, onto Edith Grove, past where the Stones used to live, left onto the Embankment, along along along, and then right over Battersea Bridge, down past the QVC building to the roundabout with the Shell garage, where Grania bought a toothbrush, and then left onto York Way or whatever it is, past Battersea Dogs' Home, where I was photographed stroking the photograph of a kitten, and then on into Battersea Power Station, the architectural highlight for me, which was moving and incredible and I loved it, and we ate egg mayonnaise sandwiches and drank squash and stretched a bit, and then on to Vauxhall, so close to home, but no, left over Vauxhall Bridge, right onto Millbank, past Labour HQ, past the Commons, over Parliament Square, round the back towards the park, but then onto Horse Guards, and then actually across Horseguards, where they do the Trooping of the Colour (I think, having never been as a grown-up) and the moon was bright, and Grania and I had our photos taken with handsome (it was dark, let us live our dreams) guards wearing full pointy-silver-hat-with-long-white-horsehair-tassel-thing and they squeezed us very tight and we giggled like forty year olds at a Chippendale shows, and then went through the building out onto Whitehall, and then (hilariously) down the exact road where the woman's wee went on my foot, and some other woman tried to talk to us at that point, wanting to bond about the handsome guards, and Grania and I both wanted to bond and be nice, but also it was about 4 in the morning and we had a little further to go and we were tired and smalltalk proved beyond us, and we ploughed on, under Hungerford Bridge, along the Embankment again to the final stop, the Savoy Hotel, where we went up to the third floor in a lift and drank cheap Champagne out of plastic flutes on the balcony and then I sat on my own in the big, loudly-carpeted room while Grania went to the loo, and I listened to the band, and when she came back she said I looked like the loser guest at a bad wedding, sitting there in my walking boots, and then we went down the stairs and briefly got embroiled in another conversation with the same woman, but then she overtook us when she became confident of the route, and we carried on east along the river, past Somerset House and Blackfriars, up to the Millennium Bridge and then left up the stairs towards St. Paul's, and then right and right again, back onto the river, and we could see Tower Bridge, our goal, but it wasn't getting any closer, and then the route took us north of the river about a block, along Upper Thames Street and then Lower Thames Street, and then to the Tower, round it and right, over Tower Bridge and finally down the stairs to the finish line, where we were given medals and free muesli and then we had to race to find a cab so that Grania could get back to my flat, pick up her luggage and head back to Victoria for the Gatwick Express. I had a bath and went to bed, and then woke up three hours later because my legs were aching so much. I took two Nurofen and went back to sleep. Then at 11am my downstairs neighbours started playing loud, bad R'n'B. I lay on my sofa, then went to my parents', fell asleep after a delicious dinner at about 9pm and went to bed. Maggie's Centres are £550 richer as a result. Excellent.
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Good news day
I don't know what it is, but news seems to go in waves - not so much between good and bad, but between fascinating and dull. The past week or so has been remarkably low on interesting news, in my humble opinion, with only Zimbabwe scraping my patented Gripometer above zero. Today, however, it's been a different story and I can't seem to get enough of the stuff. The Guardian website, which has been annoying me almost non stop of late, has this morning featured several pieces that have driven me to post comments - and several more upon which I would have commented, had I not felt too stupid to do so.
Topics of note include:
- Lap dancing clubs and the lax licensing laws surrounding them. Should they be legalised further or should the controls surrounding them be even more strict? I doubt there will ever be a day when some men don't like watching naked women writhing around, so, disgusting and moronic as I think it is, better that it's legal than it's forbidden. However, it'd be good if as much effort went into raising women's self esteem to a point where they'd rather be broke or do a crappy admin job than shake their booty in public, where Jordan and Belle du Jour aren't idolised, where Nuts and Zoo magazines don't encourage women to act like whores and where middle class girls don't go on pole dancing classes at their friends' hen dos and think it's hilarious.
- Prawns. The market for prawns is so great that huge swathes of Bangladesh land are being turned into immense prawn factories. Farmers who won't sell their land to the prawn farmers have their fields poisoned. I've got about five bags of the critters in my freezer. Feeling a bit less excited about eating them now.
- Hillary. So, she won in Pennsylvania - but her argument now seems to be 'OK, I won't win the highest number of delegates, but you should still choose me as the Democratic candidate because ultimately I'm more likely to win the election.' Which is about as fair as George W. Bush's presidency. Americans would lose faith in their electoral system and in the Democrats, McCain would have a field day saying that she wasn't democratically selected and, in short, it's a terrible idea. Much as I don't think Obama will make an impressive president, I think HRC has to stand down.
- British charitable giving is absurd. More money is given to a donkey sanctuary in Southern England than to the top three women's charities combined. The top 200 women's charities together receive less in donations than either the RSPCA, the Lifeboats or the Royal Opera House. This is outrageous and should be rectified.
and...
- Croc shoes in health warning. These rubber clogs aren't my bag. I'll admit that I was briefly tempted by a pink pair but when seen in size 10 on the end of my pasty white legs, it wasn't quite the kooky, girly look I'd imagined in my head. And a good thing too, as the incidence of accidents caused by this man-made footwear is startling - hundreds reported on escalators worldwide, including one girl who had her big toe ripped off after her foot became caught on a moving staircase. Clearly there are some terrible jokes to be had about crocodiles being dangerous but I'm far too busy and important to sit around constructing them...
That's it for now - a random summary of left wing news from London. It's not particularly funny but it gave me pause for thought.
And, just to console any of my Faithful who were worried that I might be veering off into bad reportage and away from my safer ground of self-ridicule and mindless ranting, hear this: today, at approximately 07:58, I opened my wardrobe to extract the black and white striped wool dress that I planned to wear today. At its shoulder, I noticed a white thread. 'Don't pull it,' I warned myself. 'That would be idiotic, you'll make a hole.' Simultaneously, I pulled it. It became longer. I started to panic and pulled harder. Eventually, three to four inches of thread in my fist, I broke it off. I pulled back to admire my handiwork. There was a three to four inch hole in the seam of the dress. It was irrepairable. I took the dress off the hanger and placed it, with love and apologies, into the bin. To add insult to injury, I am now wearing a pair of trousers that should, if there was a god, be far too big for me. But they fit juuuuust fiiiine. Sigh.
Topics of note include:
- Lap dancing clubs and the lax licensing laws surrounding them. Should they be legalised further or should the controls surrounding them be even more strict? I doubt there will ever be a day when some men don't like watching naked women writhing around, so, disgusting and moronic as I think it is, better that it's legal than it's forbidden. However, it'd be good if as much effort went into raising women's self esteem to a point where they'd rather be broke or do a crappy admin job than shake their booty in public, where Jordan and Belle du Jour aren't idolised, where Nuts and Zoo magazines don't encourage women to act like whores and where middle class girls don't go on pole dancing classes at their friends' hen dos and think it's hilarious.
- Prawns. The market for prawns is so great that huge swathes of Bangladesh land are being turned into immense prawn factories. Farmers who won't sell their land to the prawn farmers have their fields poisoned. I've got about five bags of the critters in my freezer. Feeling a bit less excited about eating them now.
- Hillary. So, she won in Pennsylvania - but her argument now seems to be 'OK, I won't win the highest number of delegates, but you should still choose me as the Democratic candidate because ultimately I'm more likely to win the election.' Which is about as fair as George W. Bush's presidency. Americans would lose faith in their electoral system and in the Democrats, McCain would have a field day saying that she wasn't democratically selected and, in short, it's a terrible idea. Much as I don't think Obama will make an impressive president, I think HRC has to stand down.
- British charitable giving is absurd. More money is given to a donkey sanctuary in Southern England than to the top three women's charities combined. The top 200 women's charities together receive less in donations than either the RSPCA, the Lifeboats or the Royal Opera House. This is outrageous and should be rectified.
and...
- Croc shoes in health warning. These rubber clogs aren't my bag. I'll admit that I was briefly tempted by a pink pair but when seen in size 10 on the end of my pasty white legs, it wasn't quite the kooky, girly look I'd imagined in my head. And a good thing too, as the incidence of accidents caused by this man-made footwear is startling - hundreds reported on escalators worldwide, including one girl who had her big toe ripped off after her foot became caught on a moving staircase. Clearly there are some terrible jokes to be had about crocodiles being dangerous but I'm far too busy and important to sit around constructing them...
That's it for now - a random summary of left wing news from London. It's not particularly funny but it gave me pause for thought.
And, just to console any of my Faithful who were worried that I might be veering off into bad reportage and away from my safer ground of self-ridicule and mindless ranting, hear this: today, at approximately 07:58, I opened my wardrobe to extract the black and white striped wool dress that I planned to wear today. At its shoulder, I noticed a white thread. 'Don't pull it,' I warned myself. 'That would be idiotic, you'll make a hole.' Simultaneously, I pulled it. It became longer. I started to panic and pulled harder. Eventually, three to four inches of thread in my fist, I broke it off. I pulled back to admire my handiwork. There was a three to four inch hole in the seam of the dress. It was irrepairable. I took the dress off the hanger and placed it, with love and apologies, into the bin. To add insult to injury, I am now wearing a pair of trousers that should, if there was a god, be far too big for me. But they fit juuuuust fiiiine. Sigh.
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